The enterprise data management firm Informatica LLC delivered mixed results today in its first earnings report since returning to the public markets in October, sending its stock down almost 6% in extended trading.

The company reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of 20 cents per share on revenue of $406.7 million, up 8% from a year ago. Wall Street had been looking for earnings of 21 cents per share on sales of $396.5 million.

Informatica posted a net loss of $66.3 million for the period. For its full fiscal 2021, Informatica said its revenue came to $1.4 billion, up 9% from a year ago.

Informatica Chief Executive Amit Walia (pictured) said the company finished the year with a strong performance that resulted from its “continued cloud growth” and the expansion of its flagship Intelligent Data Management Cloud platform globally across multiple industries.

“We saw significant customer momentum in our fourth quarter,” Walia said. “Fifty-nine percent of total ARR is from subscriptions, with growth coming from new subscription customers and cross-sell from existing customers.”

Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud is used by enterprises to transfer data between disparate systems. That’s difficult for companies to do by themselves, as different applications tend to store data in various formats, so the information must be adapted to the correct format for each app before it can be used.

Hence, an organization can use Informatica’s platform to take data from its sales logs and analyze it in another system more easily to gain insights into customer buying habits. The platform also helps sync information between different systems, for example if two subsidiaries need to share product pricing information.

“Our cloud-first strategy is resonating with our enterprise customers who are looking for an end-to-end data management platform that offers them the flexibility to manage data across any cloud, any system at enterprise-scale, strongly positioning us on the path to $1 billion-plus in subscription ARR,” Walia added.

Indeed, Informatica reported that its cloud-based annual recurring revenue rose 40% in the quarter, to $317 million. It saw strong subscription revenue growth too, rising 23%, to $229.7 million.

The company further reported it has 153 customers spending more than $1 million a year on subscriptions, up 47% from a year ago. Meanwhile, the number of customers spending at least $100,000 a year on Informatica’s platform rose 22%, to a total of 1,660.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE that Informatica delivered a strong quarter, closing its financial year with encouraging results.

“Strong demand for its products will fuel growth for Informatica going forward, and it should be able to accelerate this growth over the next full year,” Mueller said. “What’s encouraging is that the company reduced its losses by almost 50% compared to the previous full year, and its deficit now feels much more manageable. Two-thirds of the last year’s losses came in the final quarter though, so that might be a warning sign.”

Today’s earnings call was Informatica’s first since it returned to the public markets in October, when it raised $841 million through an initial public offering. Informatica had floated on the stock market for more than a decade prior to 2015, when it was taken private by Permira and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board.

Informatica’s guidance for the first quarter was more or less in line with expectations. The company said it expects sales of between $357 million and $367 million, the midpoint of which tallies with Wall Street’s forecast of $362 million.

Photo: Informatica